ADAMITES. - This name is customarily used to designate the adherents of certain doctrines which, beginning in the 2nd century, kept surfacing from time to time in various eras. In our own day, a parallel might be found in the theories of the "nudists."
St. Epiphanius (4th century) gives the name Adamites or Adamians to a sect that he derives from the Gnostics or Basilidians, whereas Clement of Alexandria derives it from the Carpocratians, Anastasius Sinaita from the Manichaeans, and Theodoret derives it from Prodicus, whence also the name Prodicians. In the 4th century, Sulpicius Severus attributes some of their doctrines to the Priscillianists. In the 12th century, in the Low Countries, there is talk once again of the A. and of their leader Tanchelm, unmasked by St. Norbert. In the 13th and 14th centuries they reappear in Flanders and the neighboring countries with the Beghines or Beghards, or Brothers and Sisters of the Free Spirit, and with the Turlupins. From this sect Picard seems to have come, who, according to Enea Silvio Piccolomini, in the 15th century introduced similar errors into Bohemia, restoring the name of A. Having disappeared after the Hussite war, they reappeared under the Emperor Joseph II (1780-90), but only for a short time, and they surfaced around 1848 in the Austrian Empire.
Authors do not agree on the conduct of the A. Some assert that they went about completely naked, or at most with some loincloth; others that they stripped off their clothes only upon entering their conventicles; still others, that they entered clothed, and during the assembly undressed, but with the lights extinguished. Nor are the reasons for these practices of theirs known with certainty. Some say that they intended to imitate the state of Adam and Eve before the Fall (St. Epiphanius); others assert that by such an act they claimed to demonstrate that Jesus Christ had restored us to the original innocence; others maintain that by nudity they wished to accustom reason to conquer passion, and thus to demonstrate the dominion of grace over nature.